Worship con Queso

There is a Tex-Mex restaurant in Houston I have visited on three occasions. Each meal has begun with chile con queso. The cheese at this particular restaurant is the most delicious food I have ever tasted.

With every bite, I have been overcome with gratitude to God for creating taste buds, cows, and human ingenuity. And that gratitude has led to praise.

Some folks understand this. Some think I’m kidding. And others are skeptical that such a carnal thing as a Tex-Mex appetizer could provoke genuine worship.

We Christians have a long history of mixed and sometimes openly hostile attitudes toward sensual pleasure. Saint Augustine is the fourth-century poster boy for our dilemma, struggling in Book X of hisConfessions to rein in each of his five senses. He attempts, for example, to “take food at mealtimes as though it were medicine” and to “fight against the pleasure in order not to be captivated by it.”

Augustine is ever-vigilant that pleasure in created things never replace our desire for the Creator. His caution is well taken. But lately I’ve been discovering an emphatically propleasure voice in the writings of another Christian guide.

C. S. Lewis is known, of course, as a literary scholar, novelist, and apologist. He is also, consistently, a curator of pleasure. Where there is beauty to be received, music to be heard, laughter to be welcomed, and (especially) food to be eaten, Lewis attends, celebrates, scrutinizes, describes, and partakes.

In Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, Lewis argues that the pleasures derived from forest moss and sunlight, bird song, morning air, and the comfort of soft slippers are “shafts of [God’s] glory as it strikes our sensibility.” Our task is not to guard against sensual enjoyment, but to allow our minds to run “back up the sunbeam to the sun”—to see every pleasure as a “channel of adoration.”

Lewis even argues that there is no such thing as a “bad” pleasure—only pleasures “snatched by unlawful acts.” But he is not blind to the “concupiscence” (lustfulness) that so haunts Augustine. When our response to pleasure is greed instead of adoration—when we seek to grasp and possess rather than receive—our healthy cry of “This also is Thou” distorts into “the fatal word: Encore.”

In his introduction to The Four Loves, Lewis distinguishes between “Need-pleasures” and “Pleasures of Appreciation.” The enjoyment we feel upon receiving a Need-pleasure—water to quench thirst, for example, or the scratching of an itch—is intense but short-lived. But with Appreciation-pleasures—nonessential things that awaken us to delight, like delicious smells and tastes and scenes of beauty—the sensation intensifies over time. Greed—the repeated cry of “Encore!” to, say, rich black coffee or extra-creamy queso—may transform a Pleasure of Appreciation into a Pleasure of Need, draining out of it all the lasting enjoyment.

The answer, Lewis contends, is not to avoid pleasure but to “have” and “read” it properly: to receive it, openhanded, as both a gift and a message. “We know we are being touched by a finger of that right hand at which there are pleasures for evermore. There need be no question of thanks or praise as a separate event, something done afterwards. To experience the tiny theophany”—the small sign of God’s presence—”is itself to adore.”

In many respects, Augustine and Lewis are arguing two sides of the same coin. But there is a major point of divergence at the heart of their opposite orientations to pleasure. Where Augustine sees our sensuality as a liability to be managed until God “consign[s] both food and belly to destruction,” Lewis views every earthly pleasure as an apprenticeship in adoration for the sort of thing that will go on forever in heaven.

Biblical writers seem irresistibly drawn to an image—part metaphor, part promise—of “the sacred meal with God.” From the table prepared for the psalmist (Ps. 23:5), to Jesus’ story of a great banquet (Luke 14:15–24), to the Revelation 19 vision of a wedding supper, the Scriptures are filled with the anticipation of feasting together—in the presence of God—forever. The prophet Isaiah (25:6–8) takes particular pleasure in this vision:

On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare

a feast of rich food for all peoples,

a banquet of aged wine—

the best of meats and the finest of wines.

On this mountain he will destroy

the shroud that enfolds all peoples,

the sheet that covers all nations; he will swallow up death forever.

For Lewis, earthly meals are chances to practice the gratitude and adoration that will accompany our everlasting feast with God. Just as trials train us in patience, pleasure trains us in worship. Every sensual enjoyment (properly received) is a “tiny theophany”—a chance to “taste and see” that God is good, and a reminder that there is a whole lot more where that came from.

10 comments to Worship con Queso

Oh, that ending! I can almost imagine the whole post starting off with the punchline : )

as for the rest, I love the “tiny theophany” view. Haven’t heard that word before, but it makes a whole lot more sense to me than the other. Physical flesh is not bad, nor is it good. It’s neutral — the casing for the Spirit. So finding ways to celebrate God and praise him, in the things that bring joy to not only our spirit but our physical being, just seems so completely “right”

And now I want to go to that Tex-Mex restaurant in Houston(and to Houston for that matter), just to experience that same cheese that has triggered such a lovely response. Care to name names?

Thanks, Diana. I promise I did not have that final line in mind when I began (I didn’t get until I got to the end!), but it did make me smile …
As far as the restaurant: Papasito’s, which is actually a Texan chain. There may be more legit sources of Queso (a real Texan could tell you), but the Papasito’s cheese is delicious …

One more thing, Diana, I actually beg to differ that physical flesh isn’t “good” – I think the Incarnation shows that it is very good, indeed. It’s just not the whole story … 🙂 Thanks again for your comments!

Lewis says elsewhere in an essay that our Lord finds our pleasures not too strong but too weak. Of course his point in the essay is that we are far too easily content. I think that’s the key–enjoying pleasure without settling for it.

The premise of the essay is that these earthly joys are precursors, reflections, shadows, “tiny theophanies” of the infinite joy Jesus has for us.

I suspect we all might be surprised at how much our joys and pleasures here relate to the joys and pleasures of the resurrected body. After all, after his resurrection, Jesus ate fish!

I agree with you in believing there is value in experiencing and thanking God for specific pleasures that come our way. Certainly those are indicators of the joy that is to come.

In addition, have you considered what life might be like without need-based pleasures (& corresponding desires)? Without the desire of hunger, then eating would be similar to changing the oil in the car – just one more task to remember, with dire consequences if we forget.

A funeral conversation might go like this:
“Boy, what a great guy.”
“Yea, I’m going to miss him.”
“I told him he needed to eat, and he said he would get to it soon, but was just too busy right now.”
“Come to think of it, I haven’t eaten for a few days myself, I better stop and fill up on the way home.”

Think about life, if eating were the same level of burden that comes with having to change the oil in our car. Life would be so much less enjoyable and lacking that richness that comes with eating a very good queso.

It leads me to be amazed and what God has created. I thank God for this whole desired-based life we lead – where He actually gives us both the desire and pleasure to lead us to do the things we need to do.

Welcome. Of all the blogs in all the towns in all the cyber-world, you walked into mine...and I couldn't be happier. If we haven't met, my name is Carolyn. I am a singer/songwriter, author, speaker, college instructor, recent grad school graduate, wife, mother and slightly distracted driver. (I'm working on the driver part. Road safety is important.) I am also the Director of Education for Renovaré, a wide-reaching organization that encourages and nurtures spiritual renewal. I live in Surrey, BC with my husband Mark and our two kids, Ben and Beth.

I love ideas and language (and chocolate). I'm convinced that the Kingdom of Heaven is near, and I'm rather preoccupied with figuring out all the things that might mean. This is where I blog, and where, I hope, we get to know each other. Thanks for being here. [ MORE ]

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